TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bound,John
AU  - Schoenbaum,Michael
AU  - Stinebrickner,Todd R.
AU  - Waidmann,Timothy
TI  - The Dynamic Effects of Health on the Labor Force Transitions of Older Workers
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6777
PY  - 1998
Y2  - November 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6777
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6777.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John Bound
Department of Economics
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220
Tel: 734/998-7149
Fax: 734/998-7415
E-Mail: jbound@umich.edu

Todd R. Stinebrickner
Department of Economics
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, N6A 5C2
CANADA
Tel: 519/661-2111
Fax: 519/661-3666
E-Mail: trstineb@uwo.ca

Timothy Waidmann
The Urban Institute
E-Mail: twaidman@ui.urban.org
AB  - This paper addresses the interplay between health and labor market behavior in the later part of the working life.  We use the longitudinal Health and Retirement Survey to analyze the dynamic relationship between health and alternative labor force transitions, including labor force exit, job change and application for disability insurance.   Specifically, we examine how the timing of health shocks affects labor force behavior. Controlling for lagged values of health, poor contemporaneous health is strongly associated with labor force exit in general and with application for disability insurance in particular.  At the same time, our evidence suggests that controlling for contemporaneous health, poor lagged health is associated with continued participation.  Thus, it appears that not just poor health, but declines in health help explain retirement behavior. We conclude that modeling health in a dynamic, longitudinal framework offers important new insights into the effects of poor health on the labor force behavior of older workers.
ER  -